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If law enforcement needs this type of equipment, then it has long abandoned any pretense of serving the people and has instead reverted to its original purpose of fighting the people for those in power.

on the other hand, the real deal is there are a surplus of military equipment that can be useful in all kinds of scenarios. the high clearance of an RG33 would be good in a flood, and good for active-shooter scenarios. might as well snap them up if the price is good.

And not just a little. FAR safer. Violent crime is less than half what it was 20 years ago. And even less compared to 30 years ago.

The only "increasing" violence is news-media propaganda. Because chicks hatching on the farm does not sell news.

In fact, some recent studies have concluded that it was news media coverage, and not guns, which led to copy-cat "mass" shootings on college and other school campuses. (But even so, and even though they are splashed all over the news, THOSE are way down, too, compared to 2-3 decades ago.)

American does not have "increasing" internal violence. It has decreasing violence.

Yes, it is. Leaving guns aside, it's the way logic and statistics work together.

A correlation (we see lots of accidents involving cell phones, for example) does not imply cause-and-effect. There is often some outside factor (or even many factors) that influence the things correlated. A classic example, from Darrell Huff's "How To Lie With Statistics" is: the salary of Protestant ministers in the U.S. is strongly correlated with price of rum in Jamaica.

Call me less disciplined, but I am convinced that increased gun ownership actually causes crime to go down. Strict rules of cause and effect be damned - empirical evidence weighs in on my side. Time and again, when cities and states make gun laws stricter, crime increases. And, repeatedly, when gun laws are relaxed, there is a short initial period of increased violence, followed by a decidedly downward trend in crime.

Many criminals are just plain stupid, but not all. The criminal who is not outright stupid understands the risk of assaulting an armed citizen. Like any corporate shark, the common criminal is going to minimize his risks whenever possible. If he's pretty sure that 50% or more of his potential victims are armed, he is going to get very choosy about which victims to hit. Heck, even stupid people seldom WANT to be shot!

Further, the most dangerous cities to live in today, are precisely those cities with the strictest gun control.

I would love to hear someone dispute this with logic. That I would know how to deal with. No one does that. They only dispute it with emotion, and with blind assertion, and refuse to believe it, but they can give me no rational reason to follow them.

Now sometimes it's more concrete. Sometimes you know the crackhead idiot down the road has wanted nothing more than to beat you to death with a blunt object for over a year, but will never get the stones up to try it, solely because he knows your family are gun people and he figures there's a good chance that you kill him if he tries. Sometimes, you know. The rest of the time, you dont know, but either way, it helps society in general, by lowering the crime rate, without doing anything, simply as an intimidation factor.

You see it even more clearly in the crime statistics when you break it down by type of crime and area. Rural areas have major economic problems that can definitely see some crime. But in areas where the typical household has what our pseudoliberal press would describe as an 'armory' the types of crimes committed are different. You see very few crimes that risk confrontation. People will sneak in and rob you when they are sure you are gone, but home invasions, muggings, etc are still unheard of. Old Grandad sleeping with a 12 gauge full of 00 next to his bed is not something the typical criminal wants to take any risks of dealing with.

Ready access to guns may not suppress violent crime but ratcheting up the gun laws certainly seems to do nothing to stem the tide. Assuming that gun laws are a reactionary, knee-jerk response to high levels of gun crime, the results don't seem very promising.

Perhaps something else is actually going on and fixating on guns is an easy way to avoid solving the real problem which is really hard and will make liberal busybodies squirm.

I honestly think gun ownership is a secondary, in some cases almost extraneous factor.

In regards to Europe, Scandinavia (where I have lived) actually has a higher rate of firearm ownership than the US. Yet very little violence. And why? It's cultural.

The US is home to the most violent at least of the more developed cultures on earth, if not absolutely. We have been at war constantly since WWII. We have set ourselves up unilaterally as the world policeman, and we are constantly bombarded with propaganda to justify it. The ultimate result of that is a constant increase in militarism, and in the fundamentally mistaken belief that violence is the proper and appropriate way to sole problems of all sorts. And that in turn means that we will have high and climbing rates of violent crime regardless of material circumstance.

Take away all the guns and all you will do is disadvantage the older people and empower the young thugs with knives and blunt objects. Reverse the underlying rot, and violence will decline, even if every person in the country were issued an 'assault rifle.'

That's true... North-americans have the most violent culture I've ever seen. Violent sports (american footbal, basketball, ice hockey) violent schools (bullies can do whatever they want and the victims is that they are penalized if they react) and a way of thinking and acting violent where others around never have rights. And the thing that bothers me most is that my peers do not seem to care even a little to copy this culture within my country...

While I completely agree with you on the violence being cultural rather than due solely to firearm ownership rates, I do have to disagree with you about Scandinavia having higher ownership rates. According to this [wikipedia.org] the US (89/100 people) has 53% more firearms per person than Serbian (58/100 people) who is second in the list. Sweden and Norway are ranked 10th and 11th respectively with almost 32/100 people.

This is a list of privately owned firearms, not possession, so state owned firearms (like in Switzerland) are not included. However to bring the possession rate of Sweden up to the ownership rate in the US, the government would have to give a firearm to every 2nd person.

And that in turn means that we will have high and climbing rates of violent crime regardless of material circumstance.

We have neither high nor climbing violent crime rates. They are low and have been getting lower for 30 years. See other posts in this thread for citations.

The constant propaganda isn't causing us to be violent. The constant torture porn movies aren't causing us to be violent. Rap music isn't causing us to be violent. Pile it all up and still we're getting less violent all the time.

Considering the fact that the USA's major source of violent crime comes from fewer than fifteen counties (that's right,counties...not states), logically, the remainder USA must be a remarkably safe place to be, despite all of the guns, all of the media violence.

The US has very poor areas with low violence rates, very rich places with low violence rates, and it has places where the very rich and the very poor share the same relatively cramped geography. The trend is the violence is most often found in the latter. My belief is the greatest contribution to violence is wildly varying income disparity.

"This is a list of privately owned firearms, not possession"Not only that, it's a list of *registered* privately owned firearms. Double that to get a very conservative estimate of approximate actual numbers (these are countries with utterly absurd, though rarely enforced, firearm laws which strongly encourages owners to forget to report) of privately owned firearms, then figure in a militia system similar though certainly not identical to Switzerland, and I am confident for Sweden at least the number is hig

According to this Ad Absurdum logic, dropping sand-bags in an at-risk hurricane zone actually causes the hurricane. Ever see hurricanes hit where NOBODY is getting prepared? No? Well, there you go, responding to a hurricane caused that hurricane, just like responding to a flux in gun violence caused that flux in gun violence.

PS: I don't advocate the removal of any of our constitutional rights, just the abandonment of shitty logic. Don't look so surprised, of course your regurgitated politically rhetoric is

Gun laws have a big problem: there are already tons of guns in the US. Guns last a long time, even a poorly maintained gun will generally still fire, just not accurately. This means that a decrease in availability of guns to criminals will lag the decrease to law-abiding citizens by decades.

Hypothesis: A increasing leads to B increasing.Measured: A increases, B does not.Revised hypothesis: A therefore does not lead to B increasing, since there is a negative correlation.Reality: A increasing leads to B increasing, C increasing leads to B decreasing. During the measured period, A increases and C increases. If the effect of C increasing exceeds the effect of A increasing, then B decreases.Result: By not measuring or accounting for C, the measured results appear to be a negative correlation between A and B.

The difficulty in a scenario like gun control is in the elimination of outside influences in the study. Unless all of the influences are accounted for, then negative correlation can mean that there is no causal relationship, or it can mean that the causal relationship is being overwhelmed by some other factor. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The problem is that the USA has dug itself deep into a hole and getting out is hard.

Once you have guns in the population, stricter gun control laws lead to a shift of the existing stockpile towards criminals, which probably results in higher crime. Basically: The criminals still have all the guns they used to, while the citizen don't.

Gun control laws don't work short-term. They only work long-term, if you manage to actually remove the existing guns from the population.

Your post is opinion, there's some pseudo-science within your post but ultimately it is a biased opinion. By following your statistical analysis above by considering only two factors: rise in gun ownership and falling violent crime figures, you are coming to a very short sighted conclusion. There are many other arguments out there which could have been a larger contributing factor than more gun ownership such as outreach programs, changes in judicial sentencing, changes in public perception to specific factors of violent crime, heck even the BBC published an article [bbc.com] on how removing lead from petroleum/gasoline in our cars has a strong correlation with reduced figures in violent crime.

I'm not educated enough in social policy to comment on what changes in society would have had an impact on violent crime levels but you can't state that guns do not cause crime from the figures mentioned previously. Causation of crime comes in many forms, some that we understand and some we are yet to discover. For all we know other factors may have been more influential in reducing crime during that period than the impact of guns in circulation on increasing crime.

You also have to consider that many crimes wouldn't exist or wouldn't be so accessible if it weren't for gun ownership such as school shootings[1], armed robberies[2] and homicide[3].

I'm neither pro- nor anti- gun ownership, I live in a country without firearms and that's fine by me. I do see merit in firearm ownership when regulated properly to the extent where any person who has taken a test in firearm safety, is of a stable mind and hasn't committed a violent crime[4] in the last 5-10 years can own a firearm but this I will tolerate only with strong regulation.

---

[1] How else would you go on a rampage in schools or other buildings? Sure you could use a knife, sword, axe or whatever else you choose but ultimately your attack range is gonna be a lot less allowing a lot more people to escape unharmed and a lot easier for people to overpower you if they so dare.[2] I mean armed in the sense of being with a firearm. A quarter of robberies of commercial premises in the U.S. are committed with guns. Fatalities are three times as likely in robberies committed with guns than where other, or no, weapons are used.[3] In the U.S. in 2011, 67% of homicide victims were killed by a gun. There is little doubt that many of these victims would have been murdered if there no were no guns about since those who have the intention to do so and have planned it will do it without firearms. However having ready access to a gun for an enraged, unstable individual wanting to harm another because of a form of dispute is definitely going to have an impact on crimes which weren't planned.[4] Obviously murders, attempted murders, brutal assaults and the like will prevent them ever owning a firearm and the time frame can be varied depending on the severity of the crime.

The problem is that we keep looking at gun ownership rates The Swiss has high levels of gun ownership, but they also have a very strict culture of gun safety and training. Men are required to undergo military training and be in the reserves for 10 years, keeping their sealed army-issued firearm at home or in the Zeughaus, for use in case of invasion. Thus, they have lots of guns, but little gun crime.

Now, the question is how do you measure gun culture? In America you have this issues with two main groups poisoning the culture - the gangs and the "don't tread on me" types. How can you design a study to measure the effect of this culture on gun crime?

Not the same anonymous coward, but you're wrong, and apparently your professors and textbooks are wrong too (or more likely, you misunderstood them).

Simple thought experiment: Suppose crime is going down at rate x due to some social factor, and going up at rate y due to more guns. If x > y then crime is going down as number of guns goes up.

Different topic, but you are the batshit craziest poster on Slashdot. It's clear there's no conspiracy theory too stupid for you to embrace. The thought that you are also a gun lover frightens me. I suspect that there are legitimate mental health reasons that you should never own a gun.

Wow, you must be new here. Jane barely moves the needle, by/. standards! The batshit crazy people around here have been perma-banned and post anyway as AC, stalk people and post dozens of replies to their foes. I miss the GNAA trolls, they were mild by comparison.

1. It is entirely possible to have a scenario where some factor is driving crime down faster than gun ownership is driving it up. The fact that it hasn't been found is about as important to this discussion as the continuing problems reconciling quantum gravity with general relativity is important to launching a rocket to the moon. (Hint, it isn't)

2. The fact that Northern Europe has less gun ownership and less crime than the USA implies that this factor that drives crime more than gun ownership does in

It is entirely possible to have a scenario where some factor is driving crime down faster than gun ownership is driving it up. The fact that it hasn't been found...

It may have been found. There is a remarkably close correlation to the reduction of lead in gasoline to the reduction in violent crime. The downward trend in violent crime follows after lead is banned, and it follows the ban consistently even when the ban occurs at different times in different places with otherwise similar cultures and economic conditions. Nobody has traced the biochemical pathways yet, but it's the best candidate discovered in many years.

OP's logical failure is called the fallacy of the single cause. After half a dozen logic classes and 4 textbooks... I wouldn't be so quick to judge his professors, but it's odd someone could pass a logic course without knowing basic ELEMENTARY logic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]

Most states have no registration at all. I can buy or sell a gun to another private citizen I don't have to tell anyone, as long as it's not an NFA item. I can even mill out my own un-serialized rifle that no-one knows about (talked about in a previous/. article on 3d printed guns)

Why is there any dispute? In the cities, it's crack cocaine. The various people who mugged me when I used to be the pizza guy were all getting money for a fix. And, thanks to their own success, they're all dead now. Some problems solve themselves. Meth is nasty, but crack was nuts.

In the USA it is acceptable to buy a gun with the intent to use it to kill someone (self defence, stand your ground, what ever you call it)and the large number of hand guns posed for this purpose makes the attitude clear, " It is OK to kill people"

Other countries who have large numbers of guns dont have this attitude, in fact if authorities even think you want a gun for "self defence" you will be denied ownership and the use of a gun "for self defence" can see you charged with murder/man slaughter, because the idea of killing another human being is considered abhorrent .

Hence in these countries gun crime is lower, murder rates are lower and mass murder is pretty much unheard of.

The US population is paranoid, delusional, and frightened.Freedom is not expressed by ones ability of own a gun and be able to shoot someone (in defence or what ever),it is not needing one, knowing you are safe with your family, neighbours, fellow citizens.

Macho bullshit. The best way to protect your family is to be a pragmatist. If someone points a gun at you or your family it's best to just co-operate and wait for them to go away. Your stuff can be replaced, lives cannot be. The statistics are quite clear. In cases where two people are armed and pointing weapons at each other one usually ends up being shot, in cases where only one is armed both usually live.

Most criminals don't want to murder innocent people. Aside from anything it draws a lot more heat from the cops than a simple robbery. By drawing your own weapon you turn a situation where they just want to get away quickly into one where they want to kill you first.

Of course, the most pragmatic thing to do is live somewhere where most criminals are not armed, but the US is locked into an arms race now so I'm afraid you are screwed.

One argument against registration is that we cannot be sure how those records will be used by the government or who might obtain or misuse them in the future. We have already seen some media outlets publish names and addresses of gun owners and types of guns owned from information that probably shouldn't have been publicly available. A very handy tool for convicted felons looking to steal a gun, among other potential abuses. However, even that's just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what future governments might do with this information or whom they might expose it to? Giving information to the government is dangerous because it gives governments or their allies the ability to control others through threats to publish the information, or selective publication of the information or blackmail or any number of other nefarious uses. We have already seen with our phone and email records that the government cannot abstain from mischief. Why should we trust them with a registry of every gun owner in America?

Well, I certainly agree with most of your points (I normally do) but have to debate one particular omission from yours and GPs comments. Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down. Police brutality is close to a daily occurrence today, and not just the cops manhandling a suspected felon but outright killing people.

Sure, some of this happened in the past but not to the extremes we are seeing today.

This has a potentially rubber banding effect on society. Oppressed people surely don't take the same chances as a "Free" public, bottled up it becomes rather explosive.

When police are increasingly violent I have more concerns about them receiving this type of equipment. They surely don't need an MRAP for stopping people speeding on the freeway, so why have this type of gear?

Since this is not a new phenomenon (militarizing police that is) I have done a bit of homework. The first reason for them to gear up this way is that DHS is selling us back equipment that the military purchased for Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a boost to the MIC, and a nice way to double tax us for the same equipment. Yes, DHS sells them for less money but still are selling them to local police. The next reason is obviously a Rambo effect, where cops think they are "cool" in this type of gear. Lastly, and more of a concern than the two previous is that a majority of police training today is geared toward attacking the public. There have been ample leaks from DHS training materials showing this to be true. Military and Law Enforcement agencies are using material claiming that "Patriots" and "Tea Party" type groups are potential terrorists.

There are many good links to find in this page here [theblaze.com], pay special attention to the retired Marine Colonel in the 2nd video. Enjoy.

Lastly, and more of a concern than the two previous is that a majority of police training today is geared toward attacking the public. There have been ample leaks from DHS training materials showing this to be true. Military and Law Enforcement agencies are using material claiming that "Patriots" and "Tea Party" type groups are potential terrorists.

This is not an unfounded concern. America has had periods where every now and then it became fashionable for whackos to gather in para-military groups put together frequently in reaction to progressive strides the country had made. In the post Civil War period it was the Klu Klux Klan drawn originally from Ex-Confederate troops. In more modern times there were Fascist and Nazi-Sympathizer BUNDS that would form for pretty much the same motivation only with anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism spiced with a good deal of anti-immigrant hatred. When you put this together that the largest recent surge in gun ownership was not driven by a reasonable fear of crime, but the unreasoned fear by the election of a Black President, lots of things tend to add up. These studies aren't targeting the Tea Party, they are a recognition that the Tea Party DOES draw in a lot of the extreme whacko type among it's members.
Gun ownership and crime are harder things to track, but what we are seeing in a new wave of shootings is a rise of impulse shootings, which have no real clear end to them... not even the survival of the shooters. So when it comes to trying to correlate trends in gun ownership, the real question to be asked is who's now buying guns in greater quantities than before. If the rise is that of the impulse, especially fear or angst-driven buyer than the decrease in crime is DESPITE the increase in gun ownership, not because of it.

Well, I certainly agree with most of your points (I normally do) but have to debate one particular omission from yours and GPs comments. Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down. Police brutality is close to a daily occurrence today, and not just the cops manhandling a suspected felon but outright killing people.

I would question this conclusion.I'm inclined to think that the police have always been brutal, the only difference now is increased reporting (and video recording).As a point in case, the proliferation of cell phone video has led to a proliferation of lawsuits against police who have confiscated phones or arrested the videographer.

It's something of a society wide problem, where in the past we didn't have a grasp on the extent of many problems, either from willful blindness or unintentional ignorance.

A negative correlation does not disprove causation any more than a positive one proves it. To see why, consider a simpler example: Town A has 5 police per thousand people, and 3 crimes reported per thousand people every day. The next year, they increase the number of police to 7 per thousand people, but crime rates go up to 5 crimes reported per day.

Despite the negative correlation, this doesn't disprove the idea that having a greater police presence reduces crime. It could be that poverty rates went up due to recession, resulting in more crime and prompting politicians to increase police funding. It could be that the police are corrupt or inept, or that legislation changed such that committing crime is more profitable or less risky. There could be any number of explanations for that data that don't require causation.

Town A has 5 police per thousand people, and 3 crimes reported per thousand people every day. The next year, they increase the number of police to 7 per thousand people, but crime rates go up to 5 crimes reported per day.
Despite the negative correlation, this doesn't disprove the idea that having a greater police presence reduces crime.

Ahem... I hate to have to tell you this, but yes it did. The simple fact is: you had greater police presence, but crime went up. Your hypothesis has been disproved.

In an uncontrolled study, it disproves nothing. The data could be a result of gun proliferation reducing crime. The data could just as well be a result of gun proliferation increasing crime, only for those crime levels to be affected more strongly downwards by some other independent cause. You can't simply plot a bunch of statistics and call it a day. You have to exhaustively search through a large enough data set to definitively isolate that single variable amongst all others.

If you find "stop, drop, and roll" ineffective while someone is pouring gasoline on you, you haven't disproven the technique, you're merely found one situation in which other factors are overriding it.

In fact, some recent studies have concluded that it was news media coverage, and not guns, which led to copy-cat "mass" shootings on college and other school campuses.

Nobody ever said guns lead to mass shootings, they are the means. You dont need fully automatic assault weapons, you just want them in fact no mass shooting has every been prevented by a private citizen who was coincidentally carrying an assault weapon and happened upon a mass shooter. Yes the NRA likes this fantasy and idiots buy into it to justify feeling like a big man carrying a big gun! And everybody likes to feel that if they had a big gun then they could stop anybody else that had a big gun.

Police shootings are not violent crime. The prisons are full. The sooner local government bands of thugs can wipe out a city block at a time, the sooner the National fascists can back to the job of not caring. You Americans really deserve this. You have your armies acting like police and your police acting like armies. How is THAT for a relevant point?

Is that the country with strict gun laws that just had a mass shooting [ctvnews.ca] where the killer was at large for several days?

But no, such an event in a country with strict gun laws doesn't fit the narrative you want to hear, now does it?

Canada? The country with 1/4 the firearm related death rate and 1/7 the firearm related homicide rate as the USA? Is that the narrative you were looking for? Obviously they need more guns up there for self defense against mass killers.

No. Canada has a massive welfare system funded by their natural resource exploitation. They provide for mental health. The USA doesn't. There are a multitude of other cultural factors such as Canada being formed for Safety while the USA was formed for Opportunity, etc etc.

That's what I noticed about the list of things they bought at the end of the article. They're getting M-14 rifles for $120 each,.45 pistols for $58.71, M-16s for $120, etc. Hell, if I was getting discounts like that I might buy an armored vehicle also.

That being said, a sheriff saying that America is a war zone when it is clearly not and using that as an excuse is pretty damn worrying. If you want better equipment, fine, say that. But when I walk outside my house, a war zone is not what I see. Sort of makes you wonder that, if America is a war zone, who are the police fighting against?

The Police are the civil servant equivalent of the 40ish divorced guy driving a Corvette.

Big weapons? Tim Taylor grunt...we have big weapons.

Pretty much this. Their thought process is "so, what cool shit can we spend taxpayer money on that we couldn't normally get?". Now, I have no problem with a large or metropolitan police force buying a few surplus M-4s (even though, as police, they have access to better, new weapons for the same price), comm gear, or load-bearing harnesses to equip their SWAT team. But the average beat cop on traffic duty doesn't need a surplus M-4 sitting in his trunk. And they don't need a mine resistant vehicle. And if a major police force doesn't need one, a county sheriff certainly doesn't. I don't think you need an MRAP to do a raid on a methlab, or operate speed traps on that road where you randomly drop the speed limit 20mph so you can get ticket revenue to pay for your toys. If you are really concerned about officer safety in SWAT situations then buy one of these [texasarmoring.com].

I remember once, about 3 years ago, I was officiating a high school football game on theoutskirts of a major metro area. On the sidelines were a couple local sheriff deputies watching the game and (I am assuming) working security for the game. One of them had to be a good 280lbs (and not muscle) loaded out in a tactical vest and harness, gloves, and sunglasses. He just wanted to look bad-ass (but looked like an idiot).

I got pulled over for speeding through a notorious speed trap in a little town with 400 residents and the cop walked to up me with no less than four 30 round magazines for his M4 strapped to his belt. There is quite literally no crime in this town besides people speeding on the stretch of highway that runs through it and he feels he must have immediate access to 150 rounds for a rifle. The mind boggles.

I couldn't help but actually laugh out loud at him when he waddled up to the window (which didn't help my suave talk-myself-out-of-the-ticket routine at all). It was almost comic in an over the top disturbing way.

How about pay raises. It's a crime what they pay police officers. They practically guarantee corruption. I don't see how those guys live on what they pay which explains why they're always moonlighting at 2nd and 3rd jobs.

In Atlanta I would have gone in making $45,000 a year base pay had I gotten a job with APD (I have a graduate degree). The job I do right now I am making $27000 a year and tops out around $50,000 a year. Yeah, it sure is a crime how little they pay police officers.

It's a crime what they pay police officers. They practically guarantee corruption.

I agree, but for the opposite reason you purport. In my locale, we have cops retiring on full pension in their 40's. Furthermore, until a few years ago, the cops were all "spiking" their pensions so they were pulling down $100+k/year pensions (pension pay was based on the last 18 months of income better retirement, and they all loaded up on scads of overtime during their leadup to retirement). Actuarially, they are going to live another 30+ years while drawing these $100+k/year pensions. Of course, they will immediately launch into a second career after retiring in their 40's, so their income is actually the full pension plus their new career.

That's certainly a "living wage" *cough*.

The fire and police unions are driving my city into a race to the bottom. We are half a billion dollars in the hole for the pension fund thanks to these people.

The problem is that the police/fire unions have served as "kingmakers" for the mayoral elections for the past few decades. It's no wonder their contracts have gotten "recommended" enhancements by the mayors. We finally broke the back of the union kingmakers in last year's election... a candidate they opposed won, on a platform that included bringing the unions to heel. Hopefully we can claw back the criminal amounts we are paying these people.

While I agree with you this is corruption, if the choice is between a union that moves government money into the pockets of at least some citizens vs. a lobby group that moves government money into the pockets of the 0.01% then I'd rather have the former.

If law enforcement needs this type of equipment, then it has long abandoned any pretense of serving the people and has instead reverted to its original purpose of fighting the people for those in power.

Indeed. "To protect and to serve..." has been perverted into "To protect (ourselves) and to serve (those in power)..."

Not just that. A key quote from TFA: "My job is to make sure my employees go home safe." Police leadership whose priority is on their own safety is more likely to view the populace as a problem instead of as the recipient of service. They are more likely to do no-knock night-time raids... because if it saves just one [police] life, sure it's worth burning that baby with a flash-bang.

when the riots hit LA people were surprised that the rioters stuck to their own neighborhoods and basically trashed their own communities. What nobody mentioned was the reason why. Large numbers of armed police cordoned off the wealthy neighborhoods and kept the looters from spilling over.

It's not so much the ruling class here, as the upper class. Even the upper middle class. Basically, if you're going to abandon the poor the their fate you need to build walls to keep 'em out...

RTFA. They don't need it. They KNOW they don't need it. They freely agreed they'd prefer a smaller, lighter, more practical civilian police vehicle like a BearCat but that costs $200,000 to $300,000. That 55,000 lb MRAP listing north of $700,000 only cost them a measly $5000 as army surplus.

Hell, even a police issue dodge ram, with typical law enforcement upgrades is going to cost an order of magnitude more than $5000.

OTOH, although they got the MRAP for $5k, its going to be a beast on gas, and god help them if or when they need to replace any parts on it.

I guess if they actually need something even lightly armored, if this thing runs for a year or three and they can turn around and sell it for 55,000 pounds of scrap metal after that they probably actually saved the taxpayers some money vs operating something else.

The news here isn't that the police are looking to arm themselves with military gear, its that they are on tight budgets and military surplus is overkill specs, but is a lot cheaper than suitable civilian gear.

This is the flip side of the military-industrial complex. Wasting money in pointless wars results in a crapload of military surplus gear. Savvy cash-strapped police departments are buying them, using bullshit excuses about safety (which everyone knows are bullshit, but who's going to argue with officer safety) when what they're actually doing is using taxpayer money wisely.

And that is why they're so desperate to take our weapons. Disarm the citizens and the rest is easy.

Oh, and it's not all semiautomatic hunting rifles like AR-15s. There are a LOT of.45 submachine guns floating around this country, plus other heavy weapons like Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR). You would truly be surprised what Americans are hiding.

This. The sheriff said he'd rather have a more police-oriented armored vehicle for his SWAT team, but they cost $300,000, and this only cost $5,000. It's bigger, slower, and uses more gas, but it's cheaper overall. He's working within a budget and it's budget-effective.

Yep, it's a by product of the military industrial complex that's been propping up our economy since the end of WWII. Since we couldn't have socialism we just built lots of army vehicles. And that means lots of surplus and a heavily militarized police force. I don't think anyone really planned it, it's just one of the twisted distortions from our way of keeping the economy going...

You would think that just the scrap value would be more than $5g. Hell I got $200 for my lawn tractor.

You didn't RTFA didn't you... All a government agency has to do to obtain the equipment is to apply, get approved, then pay for shipping... those are the terms of the plan. (There are probably some other rules, but you get the picture.)
The Sheriff's Office pretty much got the vehicle for free and paid $5000 for shipping costs.

Violence has been trending down for decades. This dumb ass just get a hard on with driving around in the military vehicle.

Plus he is in Johnson county doing Sheriff duties. Not anything close to a war zone. Using a few stories from the news to claim America is a war zone is so fucking stupid this guy should be fired. Clearly he can not do basic statistics within his field. Someone anyone making purchasing decision should be able to do.Tell me what crime you deal with the requires this?http://www.jocosheriff.org/ind... [jocosheriff.org]

AND it's going to be more expensive to maintain, and the police should never use military anything, ever. They are NOT the military. Too many people are loosing touch with what the difference is.

AND it's going to be more expensive to maintain, and the police should never use military anything, ever. They are NOT the military.

Why SHOULDN'T civilian organizations make use of military surplus when it is available? It saves them money and makes use of existing stuff instead of having to build new. So what if they aren't the military? I've got a couple of old field jackets, should I not use them because I'm not the military, even though they are good, rugged, serviceable pieces of clothing.

There is a bit of a difference between a bush jacket and an anti-mine vehicle. Him buying a surplus MRAP would be like you buying a surplus spacesuit from NASA. Sure, it might keep you warm and dry, but it's a lot more complicated and inefficient to use than an actual jacket and makes you look like an idiot going down the street.

Cheap how? When you have to pay 1000 times more money for a replacement part because they are only manufactured by DOD contractors? The fuel spent on these old rigs is going to be cheaper? Insurance is cheaper for these behemoths?

Me thinks your point about "cheap" is a very narrow and unrealistic. If they were buying lawn ornaments I'd agree with you completely, but these are not lawn ornaments.

Nineteen eighty-four was the year that Congress rewrote the civil forfeiture law to funnel drug money and "drug related" assets into the police agencies that seize them. This amendment offered law enforcement a new source of income, limited only by the energy police and prosecutors were willing to put into seizing assets. The number of forfeitures mushroomed: Between 1985 and 1991 the Justice Department collected more than $1.5 billion in illegal assets; in the next five years, it almost doubled this intake. By 1987 the Drug Enforcement Administration was more than earning its keep, with over $500 million worth of seizures exceeding its budget.

The numbers are only worse now. States like Minesota that are average size take in around 8 million dollars and almost every penny of that money is given right back to the cops.

Most of the MRAPs are junk. The only thing they're really good at is absorbing a blast coming from under the vehicle. They're unstable and they guzzle fuel because of their weight and lack of aerodynamics. The citizens should be more concerned about how much of the municipal budget is going into fueling these pieces of shit.

"There's violence in the workplace, there's violence in schools and there's violence in the streets. You are seeing police departments going to a semi-military format because of the threats we have to counteract. If driving a military vehicle is going to protect officers, then that's what I'm going to do."

Uh, yeah, except violent (and property) crime has fallen to levels we haven't seen in 50 years (police-involved shootings, however, have gone up - in part, I'm sure, because of all the war vets getting preferential hiring in police jobs.)

This reminds me of the firefighters in our city. Fires have become extremely rare, thanks to better standards/code for electrics, building, appliances, etc...as well as education, etc.

Instead of laying off firefighters, they started sending them out to respond to medical calls. So we have giant ladder trucks responding to grandma saying her chest hurts, instead of spending that operating expenditure on ambulances that can respond quicker, or, say, pivoting the "fleet" towards much smaller, faster SUVs that carry high-tech equipment. Everyone thinks they're still really busy fighting fires. Win-win, except for citizens, screwed by both unnecessary expenditure and ineffective utilization of budget...

Just read the statistics for the sheriffs department involved. [jocosheriff.org] 133 "crimes against persons" so far this year. But that includes a lot of bad checks, which they list as a crime against a person. It also includes telephone harassment, and "criminal threats". Some assaults, some rapes. No murders. About 63 drug offenses, mostly from traffic stops. Nothing for which an armored vehicle would be useful. It looks like a cop shop that has some real business maybe a few times a day.

They don't need an MRAP. They need a collection agency for the bad checks and a social worker for the domestic disturbances.

> "The United States of America has become a war zone," he said. "There's violence in the workplace, there's violence in schools and there's violence in the streets. You are seeing police departments going to a semi-military format because of the threats we have to counteract.

You are no longer an officer of the peace.

You are a new armed wing, a great example of the militarization of the American police force. As part part of the Deep State you see yourself as being on one side with the quarrelsome public and their whining on the other.

Violent crime in the US is at a multi-decade low.. and yet you seek tanks to patrol the streets of US cities.

It is any wonder that people freak when the DHS tries to buy 3 billion bullets?

Yet "Justifiable Homicide" by the police when attacked has almost doubled: http://tacreports.org/storage/... [tacreports.org](i.e. their response is more violent)While the number of citizens killed by police in general has remained the same despite the reduction in violent crime.

I drive through "Check Points" on major roads and highways in San Diego County staffed by mostly friendly agents who wave me to proceed on my journey. But I am scanned by an array of sensors, maybe as many as fifteen, two miles ahead of the choke point and another array near their location that is kind of intimidating. By the time I get to their station they know more about me than I do! The sites have "Stadium Lighting" at night that is blinding and destroys night vision. There is no "opt out".
But I enjoy the attention, thank you for protecting me, I guess....

"Wanna get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone."

Sure, everyone knew Capone was guilty. But the police couldn't prove it in court (largely due to Capone's effective witness intimidation and bribery campaigns). The correct response to this situation should be to gather evidence of the alleged crimes until they could successfully prosecute. Instead someone decided to go on a fishing expidition. It was an underhanded trick, to first decide someone needed to be convicted and then go looking for a crime to convict them of.

People approve of that case because it was used to lock up a real crime lord - but it's exactly the same legal trick that can be used to silence political opponents, break up protest groups and imprison activists. First decide someone must be eliminated, then look for a law they have violated. There are so many laws, everyone has violated some of them - there is no longer any such thing as a law-abiding person.

An example: Saskatoon(pop ~260k) has a murder rate than NYC(pop ~8.4m).

You seem to be missing a word from this sentence. Might it perhaps be "lower"? Because it's the only one that would be factual.

In 2013, according to the Saskatoon Police Service's crime map, Saskatoon had a total of 4 homicides (Which occurred on January 1, July 11, August 20, and August 30). That's a rate of 1.80/100k (city population is 222k. 260k is the census metropolitan area, which includes bedroom communities, which aren't part of Saskatoon's crime stats)